Russian scientists create two anti-HIV vaccines

Russian scientists have created two vaccines against the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that are practically ready for tests on volunteers, RIA Novosti learned from Sergei Netesov, deputy general director of the State Research Center of Virology and Biotechnology Vektor and a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

According to him, research in this area is conducted by several Russian institutes. The main ones are the Immunology Institute of the Russian Healthcare Ministry (Moscow), the Vektor center (Novosibirsk) and the Biomedical Center in St. Petersburg. All these institutions are working on different vaccines.

At present the first variant of the Immunology Institute's vaccine is practically ready for being tested on volunteers. One of the four candidate vaccines created by Vektor is in the same stage. Novosibirsk biotechnologists have a number of potentially promising medications against HIV that have proved efficient on cell culture, Netesov said.

About 30 vaccines are now being worked on in the world, he explained. Some of them have already been tested on people, but their efficiency has not been proved. The main difficulty in receiving results in this area is that there are no good models of this infection on laboratory animals.

At their summit in Sea Island, Georgia, USA, late last week G8 leaders came up with the initiative of founding a Global Center to work out an anti-HIV vaccine.